In the United States, student difficulties in mathematics tend to emerge in middle school. For example, the results from a study regarding trends in international mathematics and science indicate that while U.S. fourth graders perform above the international average in mathematics, U.S. eighth-grade students perform at or below the international average. By the end of high school, U.S. students perform far below the international average.
In part, this downward trend among U.S. students may result from a shift in the content that is being presented. Until the fourth grade, mathematics focuses on arithmetic instruction. In middle school, the mathematics curriculum typically becomes more visual (e.g., students learn to interpret and construct graphs) and more abstract (e.g., students learn to interpret and represent algebraic expressions).
One problem with current teaching methods is that by the time results of high-stakes accountability tests are disseminated, classroom teaching methods cannot generally be changed to address weak areas or misconceptions of students. For example, if students in a particular class have difficulty understanding and applying the quadratic equation and such deficiency and/or misconception is discovered upon the administration of a high-stakes examination or an examination presented at the end of a semester or other grading period, the ability of the teacher to receive and comprehend the results and incorporate this knowledge into a lesson plan is difficult given an established course curriculum. In contrast, determining that the deficiency and/or misconception exists while the material is being taught could permit additional or varied instruction to be provided in a classroom setting. Accordingly, enhancing student learning of mathematics material that is more visual and more abstract may permit students to actively solve problems and receive timely diagnostic feedback that can further the learning process.
In addition, some students can be heavily impacted by the emphasis on graphic and/or abstract mathematics. For example, the increased visual nature of the content can provide a distinct disadvantage to students that are interested in mathematics, but have visual disabilities.
Presenting alternative representations of the same or similar concepts in tasks, examples, and the like can augment comprehension and accommodate various disabilities. For example, when transforming content from a visual format to an auditory format, it is important to provide representations that convey the same meaning. In this manner, no student is unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged because of the format of the assessment task. For example, the notion of providing equivalent representations is a central requirement of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Under these guidelines, Web content authors provide text equivalents or text descriptions for non-text content (images, audio, video, animations, etc.).
Such text equivalents are rendered as visually displayed text, audio and/or Braille. Furthermore, audio presentations are carried out by having the text description read aloud via a live reader, pre-recorded audio or synthesized speech. However, the use of a text description rendered in audio to convey the meaning of a graph for a person who is blind can be confusing. Such an audio representation can exceed certain of the test taker's cognitive capacities. For example, a text representation of FIG. 1 could read as follows:                This figure shows a straight line drawn on a two-axis system, with a horizontal axis labeled X and a vertical axis labeled Y. All four quadrants are shown. The line begins in the third quadrant and moves upward and to the right; it crosses the negative X-axis, passes through the second quadrant, crosses the positive Y-axis, and ends in the first quadrant. Three points are shown, two on the line and one in the fourth quadrant. The point on the line in the first quadrant is labeled X, Y; the point on the line in the third quadrant is labeled X-sub-one, Y-sub-one. The point in the fourth quadrant is labeled X, Y-sub-one. In addition, two dashed line segments are shown, one that drops vertically from the point X, Y and connects it to the point X, Y-sub-one, and one that moves horizontally to the right from the point X-sub-one, Y-sub-one and connects it to the point X, Y-sub-one. This forms a right triangle with the solid line as a hypotenuse, the horizontal dashed line as the base, and the vertical dashed line as a side.        
Navigating through the audio presentation can be cumbersome, regardless of whether, for example, a live reader is asked to repeat portions of the presentation or a pre-recorded audio presentation is navigated from a cassette tape. However, improvements can be obtained. The student can be allowed to control the rate of speech and to navigate through the content in different ways (e.g., sentence by sentence or word by word). A pre-recorded audio presentation can be similarly improved over an audiocassette by providing similar navigation capabilities, such as through a digital talking book technology. If the student reads Braille, the text description of the graphic can be conveyed via Braille in either a hard copy or refreshable format.
However, a limitation of all of these approaches is that they merely provide access to the text description of the graphic rather than to the graphic itself.
What is needed is a system and method of applying an evidence-centered design (ECD) approach to task development to further the learning process.
A need exists for an adaptive algorithm for task selection that can be used with an ECD system.
A need exists for a system and method of providing assessment services, adaptive e-learning and diagnostic reports.
A further need exists for a system and method that provides reasonable accommodations to students that would otherwise be prevented from learning or being assessed due to the nature of the particular subject matter.
The present disclosure is directed to solving one or more of the above-listed problems.